Will Newspapers Survive?

That may be a strange question to ask via online blog, but the future of newspapers remains uncertain. And it's not because people don't have interest in the news, or sports, or hard-hitting local reporting.

Paul Farhi, writing in the American Journalism Review, points out some key factors that are behind the plummeting profits associated with print media. He opines that it doesn't really have anything to do with journalism. It's more about money, and how electronic alternatives have sucked away the prime revenue streams.

The real revelation of the Internet is not what it has done to newspaper readership – it has in fact expanded it – but how it has sapped newspapers' economic lifeblood. The most serious erosion has occurred in classified advertising, which once made up more than 40 percent of a newspaper's revenues and more than half its profits.

Classified advertisers didn't desert newspapers because they disliked our political coverage or our sports sections, but because they had alternatives. Craigslist and eBay and dozens of other low-cost and no-cost classified sites began gobbling newspapers' market share a few years ago. What they didn't wipe out, the tanking economy did. During the first half of 2008, print classified advertising nosedived more than 25 percent, as withering job, real-estate and auto listings erased $1.8 billion in revenue from newspaper companies' books. Newspapers have been uniquely hurt – television never had classifieds to lose.

50 million newspapers are purchased each day, and 117 million people read one. That's still a lot of exposure to the news. It's now becoming clear that the delivery method is at stake. People still crave the content. The business model - not so much.